When All of This Actual Life Played Out Where
by Jessica L. Pearson
Summary: the Hell On Earth Was I? - Addison after Bizzy kills herself.


Amelia hovers, in a bad way. That's all that she's been doing for two days is hovering. Not the kind that Addison can work passed or ignore, the kind that makes Addison's skin crawl and haunts her even when she closes her eyes (not that she's really been doing much sleeping). So, when she actually says something back to her house guest or acknowledges her ever increasing presence, it's in short, venomous sentences that almost make her feel better.

Amelia tries to offer her words of comfort, whispering things of how when her dad died she worked through it, eventually. Sure, it took fuck ups and pain and even her dying once for 3 minutes, but she worked through it. But Addison knows that Amelia will never understand because she had the loving and ever present father who read her bedtime stories until he couldn't and held her while she cried until he just wasn't there anymore. And after her dad, she still has a mother who calls twice a week even when it's one in the morning on the east coast.

So, she thinks that if Amelia looks at her like she's broken glass one more time, she's going to implode.

Amelia lets Addison do things like call her Amy again. If that says anything about fragility and the way people work, Addison thinks that she won't do this anymore. She won't plan a wedding one day, arrange a funeral the next, but she takes it upon herself to pretend that the world stops turning;

Sam follows her into the bathroom when she goes to take a shower, something to pass the time, and she thinks that if he had hair she would grab him by it and send him flying out of the room (the house, if she could). She lets the water run over her and all that she wants to do is cry, but the tears won't fall to mix with the water; instead, she exhales deeply and turns the shower off. Sam watches carefully before he retires back to work because he's making it a habit to stop by her house on his lunch breaks (she simply can't be bothered with things as trivial as work when she has to escort her mother's body to Connecticut for a burial).

She descends the stairs to hear Amelia on the phone repeating excuses back to the other end of her conversation ('you have a clinical trial and you can't tear yourself away'), and that's when Addison realizes that she's talking to Derek like he's still the hero that he once was way back when. Addison hears the stern echo of Amelia dropping her phone to the coffee table like she couldn't give a shit whether or not the thing breaks and she turns her gaze to the annoyed little sister of her ex-husband to almost offer her a smile that instead twists into some kind of dark residence between them. Their eyes meet for the first time in days and all Amelia can do is drag a hand through her hair (the hair that makes Addison think of Derek and the way her fingers used to entwine between the locks as she would arch her body into his) before tightening her jaw and excusing herself to a place that Addison doesn't bother to ask about.

In the confinements of silence in her own home, she pretends like the wood of the banister doesn't grate into her fingertips and that the creaking of the floorboards doesn't pierce her eardrums and that the quiet whirring of the refrigerator coming to life as the ice crashes into the tray doesn't make her heart beat faster. She walks around with tears pricking her eyes and her vision blurred, but they don't fall from the barrier that is her eyelids, they simply hang there like they'll grasp for her eyelashes if they have to. It takes everything in her to move her feet forward, press her heels into the floorboard as her legs shake and her knees give out; she doesn't walk tall – she just walks when all she wants to do is run.

Amelia returns with bloodshot eyes and a glass full of some alcoholic concoction that Addison thinks smells like a death wish and she's seconds away from taking it off of her hands like she isn't prone to a Manhattan or a Martini with two olives rather than one. (If she's honest, she'd say that she misses the way Mark used to know which one fit for which mood without ever asking her preference.) For the first time in days, she puts herself close enough to someone else to touch and sits beside Amelia on the couch, feeling for body heat rather than the cold corpse that was her mother; Amelia shies away from Addison's hollow eyes and that's when she knows that if she looks at her again, furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips, she's going to shut herself in her bedroom until she has to get on the plane to Connecticut.

Amelia takes a sip (more like a chug because her face is buried in the cup for minutes) and swallows with disdain, like she thinks she deserves the burn on her inner cheeks and to scathe the back of her throat. Addison looks at Amelia, wishes that she could make her sister-in-law the keeper of her secrets, but neither of them know where to start or which way to turn; they just let the dark room surround them as the sun falls from the sky. She doesn't know how to tell Amelia to just quit because as much as she loves her body heat and the way Amelia reminds her that she's still alive, she just wants her to go away.

Amelia offers her a drink and she takes it from her, swallowing the remainder of the contents in the cup and covering her lips like it's something to be ashamed of even though she just wants a replacement or an answer, to feel like her world could make sense again. Here she is, broken and killing herself over a woman who could never love her, a woman whose expectations were set so high that she couldn't even meet them. All of the details are practically irrelevant when she feels herself lean into Amelia and crush their lips together, and before she realizes what she's doing she has Amelia's dark brown hair threaded between her fingers – her tongue flitting against hers.

She's done with it, she realizes, disentangles her tongue from Amelia's and removes her lips, distancing herself like all she needed was a reminder. She can't feel much of anything anymore, just feels like she doesn't have what she needs and isn't even close to obtaining it. Her lips twist as she glances at Amelia; she swallows, feels a knot hit her stomach, and all she wants to do is cry.

"Get the fuck out of my house," she finally mutters.

She pretends like she doesn't notice Amelia move her things into Sam's house.


End file.
